Current Seed Grantees

2018-19 Whiting Public Engagement Seed Grants

As an informal part of the 2018-19 Public Engagement Fellowship process, our judges identified ten proposals with strong promise that would benefit from additional time and modest resources to deepen the planning, make or strengthen relationships with intended collaborators, or test the waters with a small-scale pilot related to the proposed project. These projects were awarded Seed Grants to support those next steps.

The 2018–19 Public Engagement Seed Grantees are:

Stephen Acabado

Anthropology, University of California - Los Angeles

Stephen Acabado and educators from the Ifugao Heritage Galleries in north-central Philippines are working with teachers and policymakers to introduce historical scholarship and important recent archaeological findings regarding indigenous people into the national K-12 history curriculum.

Clarissa Ceglio

Digital Humanities, University of Connecticut

Museums and Civic Discourse: History, Current Practice, and Future Prospects

Clarissa Ceglio is collaborating with the Jane Addams-Hull House Museum’s Jennifer Scott, the American Alliance of Museums’s Nicole Ivy, Elena Gonzales, Robin Grenier, and other leaders in public history on an open-access toolkit for museums wishing to foster civically-engaged, humanities-based public discussions.

Jack Hamilton

Media Studies, University of Virginia

What's That Sound? A Podcast on Music and Technology

Jack Hamilton is developing a narrative podcast (his second) exploring the role of technological breakthroughs in shaping the development of American music, focusing each episode on a single technological advance and a well-known piece of music.

Reiko Hillyer

History, Lewis & Clark College

Theater From the Inside Out: Illuminating Mass Incarceration

Reiko Hillyer and the members of her “inside-out” class for Lewis & Clark and incarcerated students are working with a professional director and actors to devise and present a theater piece based on the history of the American prison system and the students’ own experiences with it.

James Levy

History, University of Wisconsin-Whitewater

The Lands We Share Initiative

Building on the Wisconsin Farms Oral History Project, James Levy is developing a traveling exhibit and community conversation model to bring residents together to consider the impact of changing agricultural practices and other historically-rooted issues facing rural states.

Gesel Mason

Dance History, University of Colorado Boulder

No Boundaries: Dancing the Visions of Contemporary Black Choreographers

Gesel Mason is developing a digital exhibit on the aesthetics, innovations, and legacies of contemporary African-American choreographers. Combining videos, artifacts, and interviews with leading choreographers, she will contextualize their contributions within the historical and cultural landscape.

Cynthia Prescott

History, University of North Dakota

Pioneer Monuments in the American West

Cynthia Prescott is using the GIS-enabled app Clio to create detailed historical entries and walking tours of 200 sites in the West, with an emphasis on controversial public monuments and shifting representations of race and gender.

Mary Rizzo

History, Rutgers University-Newark

The Chicory Project: Intergenerational Civic Dialogue about Place Through Poetry

Building on her recent digitization of Chicory, a Baltimore poetry magazine published with War on Poverty funds from 1966-1983, Mary Rizzo is working with Baltimore teachers and youth nonprofits to develop educational programs for K-12 students using poetry as a tool to understand local history.

Jennifer Stoever

English, SUNY - Binghamton

The Binghamton Historical Soundwalk Project

Jennifer Stoever and her collaborators are developing a series of installations and audio components to turn a one-mile loop of Downtown Binghamton into an experience that will provoke conversations about the city's history and present conditions, and the stake of all residents in its future.

Julie Weise

History, University of Oregon

Corazón de Dixie: Southern Heritage for Latinx Youth

Julie Weise, a scholar of Latinx history in the American South, is collaborating with Latinx teen video bloggers (“vloggers”) to create a series of short videos that investigate and celebrate the history of Latin and South American migrants and their unsung contributions to Southern culture.